2011 has been a bit of a rollercoaster year, but certainly one I won't forget! Here's a brief recap of the highlights, things I learned, and my goals for 2012.

Early in the year, I worked with Anthony Calzadilla and Andy Clarke on Madmanimation — a CSS3 animation for Andy's talk which was featured in all six An Event Apart dates across the US. I worked on the design with Anthony, who animated the scenes, while Andy progressively enhanced and provided fallbacks for less capable browsers.

Christmas is fast approaching, so here are a few of my recommendations on what to get the designer, illustrator, photographer, or general geek in your life.

Up first are the fantastic books from A Book Apart. These books are a pure joy to read and belong on the shelf of any web designer. In fact, they probably already are on the shelf of the designer you've got in mind, so try to find out beforehand if these are needed in their collection. You can purchase them separately or save big on a set of six with their current holiday promotion.

I recently returned from my very first trip to the UK — a family vacation that I planned close to Brighton Digital Festival, a month-long celebration of technology in one of England's most creative cities.

While I was unable to attend dConstruct, I did pick up a ticket to the brand new Update Conference, organized and curated by developer Aral Balkan. Until then I had only attended An Event Apart so it was quite a different experience — from ticket price and social events, to conference format and entertainment, it was obvious that Aral not only wanted it to be a great learning experience, but a spectacle as well!

I've been a huge fan of the app from the first time I used it, but there are quite a few people who struggle with the concept and don't understand the benefits. Here's seven reasons why I think Gowalla is a must-have on your mobile device.

Gowalla is a lot like Twitter — the more friends you follow, the more useful it becomes. While I try to encourage friends in my city to join Gowalla, it's not quite as popular here as it could be (most just use Facebook places, which is, let's admit it, awfully boring). Fortunately, I do have a lot of friends in other cities who are very active Gowalla users, especially those in the conference circuits. Recently during my trip to attend An Event Apart Boston, Gowalla let me know when my friends were arriving at the airport, when they were arriving at the hotel, and which sights they were seeing while I was taking a different route.